Guess who’s slamming islamophobia & defending Huma Abedin?

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN), has long been inspired by Joe McCarthy, and this time, she is aiming her witch hunt at Huma Abedin, a Pakistani-American top aide to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, for her alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Abedin is also married to Jewish former Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY), the perfect way to inflitrate, not only the U.S, Government, but the Jewish World! [that was sarcasm and I’m Jewish]

Guess who defended Abedin and religious liberty (for Muslims, not just Christians, which is often the implicit argument made by those who defend religious liberty lately)? Conservative Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI)! Here he is during a town hall meeting on Sunday, trying to reason with a most unreasonable constituent who implores her congressman to support Bachmann’s investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood’s inflitration of the U.S. Government and ties to Abedin.

Transcript after the jump.

ThinkProgress provides the video and the transcript.

SENSENBRENNER: Let me say that I do know Huma Abedin and I think that the comments that were made about her in that letter, whether or not they were taken out of context, were the wrong thing to do… I think the Constitution in saying that there shall never be a religious test for any office of trust and profit under the United States meant that people should not be judged on the basis of their religious beliefs or lack of religious beliefs. That was Thomas Jefferson that put that in the Constitution — I think he was right.

CONSTITUENT: I think that there’s a political ideology that’s a concern in Islam that is concerning and that should be looked at and we should know that this person is not a threat…

SENSENBRENNER: Heidi, Heidi, Heidi, the First Amendment prohibits the government from making a distinction between what is “good religion” and what is “bad religion.” That’s none of the government’s business.Religion is a personal issue to every one of the people who lives in the United States, whether you practice a faith, how you practice a faith, whether you don’t practice a faith, whether you say you’re a member of a faith but don’t practice it, it’s none of the government’s business. And this is the whole issue of religious freedom. And that has been one of the most cherished freedoms that this country has had since it’s beginning.

Although it’s discouraging to hear the paranoid rants coming from the constituent, it’s encouraging to see a defense of the separation of Church and State and the right to be Muslim coming from the right. With all the bad news in the world, it’s nice to see Islamophobia slammed, instead of endorsed. Could the tide be turning?

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Born and raised on the mean streets of New York City’s Upper West Side, Katie Halper is a comic, writer, blogger, satirist and filmmaker based in New York. Katie graduated from The Dalton School (where she teaches history) and Wesleyan University (where she learned that labels are for jars.) A director of Living Liberally and co-founder/performer in Laughing Liberally, Katie has performed at Town Hall, Symphony Space, The Culture Project, D.C. Comedy Festival, all five Netroots Nations, and The Nation Magazine Cruise, where she made Howard Dean laugh! and has appeared with Lizz Winstead, Markos Moulitsas, The Yes Men, Cynthia Nixon and Jim Hightower. Her writing and videos have appeared in The New York Times, Comedy Central, The Nation Magazine, Gawker, Nerve, Jezebel, the Huffington Post, Alternet and Katie has been featured in/on NY Magazine, LA Times, In These Times, Gawker,Jezebel, MSNBC, Air America, GritTV, the Alan Colmes Show, Sirius radio (which hung up on her once) and the National Review, which called Katie “cute and some what brainy.” Katie co-produced Tim Robbins’s film Embedded, (Venice Film Festival, Sundance Channel); Estela Bravo’s Free to Fly (Havana Film Festival, LA Latino Film Festival); was outreach director for The Take, Naomi Klein/Avi Lewis documentary about Argentine workers (Toronto & Venice Film Festivals, Film Forum); co-directed New Yorkers Remember the Spanish Civil War, a video for Museum of the City of NY exhibit, and wrote/directed viral satiric videos including Jews/ Women/ Gays for McCain.

Katie is a writer, comedian, filmmaker, and New Yorker.

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